Edited by Günther Grewendorf and Helmut Weiß
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 220] 2014
► pp. 223–246
This paper discusses Austro-Bavarian directionals, which adhere to the following pattern: preposition plus suffix -a or -i, e.g. auffa (upwards-a) and auffi (upwards-i). These directionals indicate that movement occurs either towards the speaker’s location (-a) or towards a location crucially distinct from the speakers location (-i). I propose that this alternation is an overt manifestation of Hale’s (1986) semantic universal of central versus non-central coincidence. I analyze them as fully fledged PathPs whose internal syntax is based on Ritter and Wiltschko’s (2009) implementation of the coincidence theme. These directionals show that dialectal data can confirm both semantic and syntactic universals that have been argued for on the basis of entirely unrelated domains and languages.